1. Technical Field
The invention relates to land use. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for monitoring and responding to land use activities.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Any land based property, e.g. land, a building, an apartment, a commercial structure, which may include such resources as a water well, is not only an asset but also potentially a liability. The liability attendant with such a property is typically attributable to any pollution in the ground, any noise or air pollution related to the property, or any potentially dangerous use of the property. Therefore, the owner (or sometimes the user, such as tenant) of a property needs to protect his asset and manage such liability to optimize the net sales value or use value of the property (see FIG. 1, which is a graphic representation of the asset and liability aspects of real property).
The difficulty of managing land based assets and liabilities is that they exist in a dynamic environment with constant changes and outside influences (see FIG. 2, which is a graphic representation of the potential economic risks and losses associated with real property).
Events External to Site
Today more than ever, it is important to monitor events occurring in the vicinity of a site. These external events or activities can be of many different kinds, such as set forth in FIG. 2, but they not limited to such activities. For example, a change in zoning law can increase or decrease the land based property by either expanding or limiting the future use of the property. A change in traffic can also increase or decrease the property's value. In the case of a residential area the impact of a traffic pattern change is negative; in a retail environment certain kinds of traffic increase can be very positive for the use value and therefore value of the property.
In the event of underground pollution there is a serious liability related to the property. Often, even after a polluted site has been cleaned up, there remains some amount of residual contamination left in the ground because today's technology and/or exorbitant costs do not allow a complete clean-up. Furthermore, often the pollution is not limited to the site, but extends underground to neighboring areas.
Pollution is not limited to underground pollution. It could be, for example, air pollution or noise, which travels outside of the boundaries of a property. In the above cases, a property owner is often not only liable for the pollution attributable to the site owned, but also for it's outside reach, even though the owner has no control over such area. If today someone uses the land inappropriately the likely damages caused by the property owner increase. For example, there are an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 active and former gas stations in the U.S., where no more than 125,000 of those are actually active current gas stations. Gas stations are notorious underground polluters.
There is an additional important element of complexity, i.e. the pollution is often underground and is not limited to the boundary of land ownership. The plume of such pollution often reaches into neighboring properties and public roadways. Most of current and former gas stations, for example, have such underground pollution extending outside of the property boundaries, the plume (area) of which in most cases extends to outside of the property. For example, consider a day care center being built on a property in the vicinity of a current or former gas station, where the plume extends under that property. Years later it becomes evident that the gases released from the plume have caused a health damage to the people using the day care center. Without question, the gas station owner is liable for the damage, which now extends to millions of dollars in legal costs, damages, and possible penalties. In this example, the wrong land use in the vicinity of the property has caused huge damage in liability costs to the property owner. This damage could have been easily averted if the property owner had been made aware during the planning stage that a day care center is being planned at the site. In that event the property owner could have taken a range of actions, such as alerting the city planning department and asking them to revoke the building permit, providing an incentive to the owner of the property for the planned day care center to find a different site, or finding a safer use for the property, such as a commercial building with appropriate engineering barriers, or a parking garage, etc.
Events Internal to Site
It is also important to monitor activities occurring at the site. This is important for reasons such as unauthorized access and protection against fire and other emergencies. However, there is a new element and that is to monitor the land use at the site.
The land use can be restricted in a number of ways, such as:                Local and regional zoning restrictions;        Deed restrictions, i.e. restrictions which are documented in the deed of land; and        Institutional controls (for a definition, see below).        
This is often necessary because not all the pollution can be removed. Such limits, for example, specify that the land can be used for certain types of commercial use, but not for residential development, or that none of the ground can be removed or dug into.
Many institutional controls have been implemented over the past 3-5 years. However, to date there is no method to monitor the enforcement of such controls.
Prior Art
Today, there are many tools that may be used to manage events internal to the site, i.e. any activities not related to external influences. These tools include fire or smoke detectors, heat and motion sensors, video cameras, groundwater and other sampling methods, and similar tools. For example, a fire or security alarm system alarm monitors the internal events and determines, for example, “Is there any smoke or fire?” or “Is there an intruder physically at the site trying to enter the building or property or certain areas within the property?” The person monitoring the cameras or data collection with respect to these alarm systems may or may not be located at the site.
These methods have in common that they detect a physical change or element, such as chemicals in the air or physical objects moving in the vicinity. These methods do not address the issue of how the land is being used, nor how the adjacent land is being used. Furthermore, while today's tools may detect the presence of something, they can not detect future or intended events. Finally, none of today's methods of monitoring are linked to a fixed geographic area or space.
Groundwater and soil sampling is the method currently used by environmental regulators. Monitoring wells from which samples are taken quarterly are installed at and around a polluted site. The results provide information of whether the contamination has changed at that well. The regulator deducts from a series of sampling results if there are any positive or negative changes. The nature of quarterly sampling has many shortcomings, including:                The sample is always post event or reactive. For example, the sample picks up that the contamination has moved underground. The sample can never be proactive, i.e. detect that an event is about to happen, such as construction de-watering which can cause changes in ground water patterns, which in turn shift or move the contamination plume. Therefore, knowing about planned construction and construction method could proactively avoid an underground movement of the pollution;        The sample provides no information of the events above ground. Sampling can never detect a change in land use, such as the opening of a school, nor could it detect trenching work, such as building a new sewer line through the contamination, possibly exposing workers to unsafe conditions.        
Geographic information, e.g. street address, longitude/latitude data, displayed on maps is also widely used. The most common use is of online maps, such as driving directions. Earlier versions showed a property location marked with a marker, which is typically positioned at the center of the geographic property. More advanced versions show the actual or estimated shape of the property location. More sophisticated tools include, for example, a store locator. Other methods include overlays, where a certain characteristic, such as micro-climate, is imaged as a shape on top of a map.
Land use at a site is today regulated by the local/municipal and government permitting process, as well as local, state and federal agencies. To some extent it is monitored after the permit has been issued by building and other inspectors.
There are no known and effective methods of tracking institutional controls. The EPA states in a draft paper “ . . . proper implementation, monitoring, and enforcement is essential to the effectiveness of the IC . . . Draft Guide” (Institutional Controls: A Guide to Implementing, Monitoring, and Enforcing Institutional Controls, February 2003). This paper identifies the need for monitoring, but does not mention any method or procedure for accomplishing such monitoring.
Currently bills concerning land reuse and revitalization are in the legislative process in California (California Land Reuse and Revitalization Act of 2004), other states, and on Federal level. These bills establish the legal framework to facilitate the redevelopment of about 600,000 brownfields in the U.S. These bills typically include an appropriate care requirement which provides that the new user of the brownfield must be in compliance with land use controls established with respect to the use of the site. There is currently no method in operation to satisfy this requirement.
It would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for monitoring and responding to land use activities.